Ever wondered why some things become popular, and other don't? Why some products become hits while others flop? Why some ideas take off while others languish? What are the key ideas behind viral marketing? This course explains how things catch on and helps you apply these ideas to be more effective at marketing your ideas, brands, or products. You'll learn how to make ideas stick, how to increase your influence, how to generate more word of mouth, and how to use the power of social networks to spread information and influence. Drawing on principles from his best-selling book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch On," Professor Jonah Berger illustrates successful strategies for you to use buzz to create virality so that your campaigns become more shareable on social media and elsewhere. By the end of this course, you'll have a better understanding of how to craft contagious content, build stickier messages, and get any product, idea, or behavior to catch on.

VP

Very useful course. I had already read the whole book "Contagious" so it helped me a lot before actually starting this online course. The material is very intersting and filled with useful insights.

RS

Aug 04, 2016

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

Very interesting subject! There's science behind all viral contents. It's not the luck. Very easy to understand and put into practice. Best teacher I've ever learned with. Love this course so much!

從本節課中

What Makes Ideas Sticky?

In this module, you'll start to learn what makes products, ideas, and behaviors contagious; in other words, why they catch on. You'll explore the science behind why some things become popular while others fail. You'll also discover the key principles, or six SUCCESs” factors that make messages stick. Finally, you'll learn how to make any idea more memorable, whether it’s a pitch to your boss or a lesson you want students to remember.

教學方

Jonah Berger

Marketing Professor

腳本

The third point to making messages and ideas stick is the idea of concreteness. And the important point here is show, don't tell. So, urban legends tend to be very concrete. You might have heard of famous urban legend that a friend of yours might have told you, about a business traveler. They were on a long trip and they were at a particular airport hotel. They were having drinks in the lobby. And they were by themselves. No one was really talking to them. Suddenly a very attractive comes up and says I have been watching you all night. Can I buy a drink? And your friend was very flattered. He is a normal looking guy. He does not get that much attention. So this beautiful woman asked him to buy a drink. He says sure. They had a great conversation. They enjoyed chatting, and the next thing he knew he woke up in the morning in a bathtub full of ice. Groggily, he couldn't figure out what it's doing on. He turned to the side. And on the mirror was written, call 911. I've stolen your kidney. Now, you've probably heard that urban legend. It's circulated around the world many times. But think about the details of that that you remember that you've heard. You always remember the kidneys. You always remember the bathtub full of ice. And you always remember the lipstick written on the mirror. In fact, if you had to think about it, what color was that lipstick? You can probably see it. It's red. How did that ice feel? It was probably very cold. What does that bathtub look like? You probably have a mental image in your mind. Urban legends use concrete details to help us to remember the key points. But often when we communicate, we don't always use such concrete details. Business language for example tends not to be very concrete. There's a great online resource called a business buzzword generator, which asks you to pick a word from three columns. So column one for example has words like strategic, interactive and responsive. Column two had words like cost-based, logistical and discretionary. And column three has words like vision, paradigm and re-engineering. So, if you've picked one from each column, you might come up with strategic cost-based vision. You've probably heard something like that before, our company's strategic, cost-based vision, allows you to cut cost to the core, and see beyond market fluctuations to help you achieve what you want to achieve, sounds pretty good, right? Or interactive logistical paradigm. Our interactive logistical paradigm takes care of the back end so you don't have to worry about it. These things sound pretty good when you hear them. In fact, you probably have a friend or know a company who's mission statement uses a couple of these words. If I asked you to remember what I said a couple minutes later, you probably would have no clue what it was. And part of that reason is because these words aren't very concrete. They're extremely abstract. We can't get a picture of what these word look like. For example, if I said the word cost space. If I asked you to close your eyes and think about the word cost based. What comes to mind? What do you see when I saw the phrase cost based. You probably don't see anything. There's no picture that comes to mind when I say the word vision for example. Do you have a picture that comes to mind? Maybe you see someone sitting on the edge of a cliff staring off into the distance, but no real picture comes to mind where a bathtub full of ice, we can all see that. Lipstick written on the mirror? We can call see that. And so to effectively make ideas stick, we have to be more concrete. Let me give you another example. There's a local construction firm that says building is a series of conversations Interactions and collaborations with a focus on creating the kind of synergy that produces extraordinary results. Now that's a dead giveaway by the way, when you see the word synergy, you know it's not gonna be very memorable. But let's compare that, that abstract language, with much more concrete language. Let's take an event planner, for example, who says well who designs it, arranges it, brings it, loads it, drapes it, pins it, hangs it, lights it, and then takes it all down so you don't have to? We do. Now, think for a moment, that is much more concrete. Think about when you would want to call that local construction firm that was so abstract, if you can even remember their message. Well, you might call them when you wanna have a series of conversations. Not very useful, right? With the event planner, you know exactly when you're gonna wanna call them, and you will know exactly what they do, because they told you in very concrete language. You can see them hanging the lighting. You can see them taking it all down. You can see them pinning it up. And so you can remember exactly what they do, exactly what their value proposition is and how to deliver that value proposition. And so the key question when we think about applying this idea of concreteness is can you see it, or can you visualize it? When people close their eyes, will they be able to imagine, see a picture, of what you're saying? Imagine for example you want people to care about property crime. You want them to think that property crime is a big problem. Don't just use lots of statistics. Use language that will help them see that. Talk about shattered glass for example. Right. Or help them feel something and see the picture you're talking about. The door was ajar when I came home for example versus property crime is a big problem. We can all see that shattered glass. We all know the feeling of what it is like if we came home and our door was ajar and because we can see it, we are much more likely to remember it. One more fun example, Boeri makes ski helmets, they want to help people see that their helmets are really effective, really good and unlikely to break when you crash on a big hill. Well they could say something like, our helmets can withstand thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure, but that's not what they do. Very simply, they show an ad with this picture. And it's got a chicken on a conveyor belt. And it's got a number of packages of chicken that have gone through the chicken processing plant and have been turned into chicken parts. And then they've got one chicken sitting there with a Boeri helmet on, and a woman staring at the chicken. And what that says is while concretely it must be a really powerful, effective helmet. It must be really safe. It must be really hard to break cuz it made this chicken not get turned into chicken pieces. By turning that abstract into concrete, by helping people see how good that helmet was in protecting people's heads, it made it much more concrete and much more memorable as a result.